Are Frozen Meals Healthy?

In this day and age where time is limited (1/3rd of Australians are under chronic time stress) and everyone wants to avoid doing household chores as much as possible, frozen meals are becoming much more common. Does your household eat most dinners using frozen meal ingredients?

Maybe it makes you wonder, are frozen meals healthy? As healthy as eating meals with freshly bought ingredients? Unfortunately, there are a lot of myths perpetuating around the blogosphere about how healthy frozen meals can or cannot be.

In the article below, we will clear up some of those myths and show you the truth behind frozen meals. This way you can make the right decision for your loved ones when grocery shopping.

Unhealthy Frozen Meal Ingredients

The first thing you need to realize is that certain unhealthy frozen meals contain inordinate amounts of nasty ingredients. Some of these nasties are preservatives, artificial flavouring (MSG being a big one), high meal sodium content, and high amounts of fat.

The high salt and fat content is because the manufacturers need to ensure that the frozen meal tastes great and the easiest thing to make something taste delicious is to add salt, butter/oils, and artificial flavouring.

If you are a busy individual and cooking every meal is impossible for you, then you shouldn’t think that frozen meals are off the table completely. It’s just about becoming a more discerning consumer. One who doesn’t mindlessly purchase whatever is available on the grocery shelf.

What Should Healthy Frozen Meals Include?

The main idea here is that frozen meals can be as healthy as freshly cooked meals. But this only happens if they include certain ingredients and follow certain criteria.

Locally Sourced

You might presume that fresh food is higher in nutritional value than frozen food. But think about how long your fresh food is sitting around on lorries, boats, or whatever else to get to you. In all that time, it is slowly losing nutritional value and becoming less healthy.

locally sourced ingredients

On the other hand, if a frozen meal has ingredients that were locally sourced so they didn't have long to travel and were snap-frozen to lock in their nutritional value, freshness and taste, they would be as healthy or healthier than a freshly cooked meal. With such a frozen meal, you would feel that it was made on the same day as when you eat them and that it was made by yourself or someone you tend to refer to (your mum, your grandma, etc...)

Minimally Processed With Wholesome Ingredients

This is another thing to look out for when choosing frozen meals. You want something that looks like a freshly prepared meal would. That is, it should be as close to the fresh ingredients as possible.

Choose frozen meals made from ingredients like veggies, fruits, lean proteins, whole grains, etc. Try to avoid eating only frozen pizzas, turnovers, or items like that. Also, avoid frozen meals with added sugars, as Australians are already consuming 1/2 kilo of sugar in their diet weekly.

Minimal processing is crucial. You don’t want to eat something that is far and away from the ingredient it was once prepared from. For example, you want to eat brown rice rather than brown rice crackers, or desserts with frozen strawberries rather than strawberry fruit strips.

You get the idea. Whenever you choose a frozen meal, make sure they outline how close to the natural state the ingredients are in.

Reading food labels is essential for this. Check the frozen meal calories to ensure it isn't over the top either.

Also, avoid frozen meals with unnecessary added preservatives or additives. There’s no need nowadays with all the innovative freezing techniques to use preservatives or additives to freeze foods. Freezing itself is a preservation technique so that meals you can find healthy, minimally processed foods without these nasties added.

fresh ingredients delidoor

Watch the Serving Size

When you are perusing through the food labels, make sure you take a quick look at the serving size as well. Sometimes frozen meals will try to sneak two servings into what looks like a single-serving meal.

And humans are easily deceived. We will eat whatever is on our plate, even if it’s much bigger than our typical serving.

You don’t want to eat all that extra food and ruin your diet because you weren’t paying attention.

Choose Better

You will want to choose frozen meals that are of higher quality than choosing frozen pizza or frozen TV dinners (like the ones featured on old daytime shows). Of course, nowadays, due to increased demand, there are lots of frozen meals available in the frozen meal aisle at your grocer.

But you will want to choose with a discerning eye when picking out frozen meals for your family and loved ones. Don't be lazy about it and pick the cheapest one. Or pick the one that has the most delicious-looking picture.

That's why Délidoor is such an easy choice when it comes to frozen meals.

Advantages of Ordering From Délidoor

Tired of cooking and preparing meals for your family and looking for a better solution? We founded Délidoor to help families slow down, enjoy meal times, and connect.

If you are pondering whether to start ordering frozen meals from Délidoor, there are many advantages to doing so. We will outline some of them below.

healthy frozen meals by delidoor

Good, Clean Food With Real Ingredients

Not only are our meals delicious, but we are constantly trying to create new ways of doing things and building extraordinary meals with natural real ingredients. We use seasoning and delicious sauces with the decadent layering of meals to create a home-cooked meal that tastes like your grandma would have prepared it.

Not only that but we source our fresh veggies, meat, and fish from farms and local distributors around Sydney. You will notice that difference when you take a bite of our frozen meal - the freshness and flavour of it.

No Nasties

We pride ourselves in creating real home-style cooking that translates to high-quality healthy meals for you. We don’t use artificial ingredients, preservatives, or other nasties like that, so your meal is as healthy as can be. All our sauces are made from scratch.

Because we use seasoning, sauces, and fresh ingredients, we don’t need to add high amounts of salt, fats, sugars, or flavour (artificial or natural) to make it taste good.

Our frozen meals are delicious and clean. And they are fast - all you need to do is heat them and you are ready to eat them in seconds.

Imagine how much time you would save doing that. And you don’t have to worry about causing harm to your loved one’s health by choosing our frozen meals.

Positive Environmental Impact

Since all of our ingredients come from local sources, this means that they aren’t sitting on ships or lorries forever to get to you and losing nutritional value. They have a low environmental impact and can help you reduce your carbon footprint.

We make sure that we source our fresh, natural ingredients from sustainable suppliers. We also avoid the usage of plastic packaging made from fossil fuels.

Can Be Stored Forever in the Freezer

Another thing you need to keep in mind is that frozen foods can be stored in the freezer for an indefinite period. As long as it stays at a temperature of 0 degrees Fahrenheit or lower, it’s safe, says Foodsafety.gov.

This isn’t something you can say about fresh ingredients. You’ve probably lamented about how much food you have to throw into the garbage every week because you weren’t able to eat it in time.

food waste

This is terrible for the environment as well, because all that food waste sits in landfills (unless composted) and produces greenhouse gases, contributing to global warming and climate change. Frozen food can help extend the shelf life of your food which reduces waste.

But more than that, this means you don’t have to spend hours every week going grocery shopping to replace all that spoiled food you threw out. You will save on your grocery bills, save time, and you will also save the environment.

Now all you have to do is think about how you are going to utilise all that time - maybe a movie night with the family?